Bettina John | Co-founder of AIRimages: AIRimages is a form of art making that doesn’t limit itself to the object and the materialisation of concepts. It is a process-led way of working that is concerned with more than just the results. The process embraces the inclusion of unpredictable events rather than just realizing what was.

Jaime Leme | Co-founder of AIRimages: I think the term ‘AIRimages’ represents the fact that we work with the raw material we find around us in everyday life, things that are “in the air”, at the streets and around our daily routine. The pictures and projects we create are interactive and depend on the participation of the public that happen to be at the environment we choose to perform in.
Another reason to be called AIRimages is because of the over saturated amount of ‘images’ around us: outdoors, magazines, internet, TV, cinema… Images are so present in our visual perception of reality that one can say that they merge with reality. Images are surrounding us everywhere, like air.

Sebastien Freuler | Co-founder of AIRimages: AIRimages brings together a wide range of contemporary visual languages. It questions, deconstructs, reconstructs and recontextualises them. It is an interdisciplinary and multicultural process of art making, which constantly focuses and compares two visual worlds; the images produced by the controlled environments of the mass media and the images made in spontaneous and uncalculated environments.

artpjf: How do you interact in an art collective? Does each one of you have a specific role and know exactly what his function is or is there someone who is a type of leader?

Bettina John | Co-founder of AIRimages: Everybody has their role, yet the areas are almost seamless. Everyone of us is also interested in what the other is working on, observing and then having influence on its realisation. Conceptually we work together one hundred percent but everybody gives a slightly different input and perspective on the subject. A constant exchange is ideal so everybody knows what the other is trying to do.

Jaime Leme | Co-founder of AIRimages: We don’t like the idea of having a hierarchy; it’s better to leave as much space for new ideas as possible. When we collaborate with a new artist, we prefer not to suggest how they should participate, instead we would like them to tell us what they would like to do. Then we sit and discuss possible ideas to accommodate everyone’s wishes. To collaborate with professionalism from a variety of different disciplines (photography, fashion and multimedia) helps to create the initial directions to get started, but as always this workflow is subject to change at any stage.

Sebastien Freuler | Co-founder of AIRimages: We are all specialised in different domains of image making: photography, fashion, graphic design, performance, film and animation; yet we also share and exchange our knowledge wit each other and feed our different perspectives into each project. There is no real leader so things are lead by spontaneous ideas and impulses that are then developed collectively. Our projects are a constantly considered as work in progress and can evolve into something different from one moment to the next.

artpjf: A lot of your projects are of a participatory nature. What are the positive and negative aspects when working with different people that intervene in your projects?

Bettina John | Co-founder of AIRimages: The more minds think about something, the more accomplished and interesting it becomes. As ideas bounce back and forth they become stronger and more mature . Sometimes that can be confusing and we have to abandon an individuals idea in favor of a collaborative process, even if there are precious to them. That doesn’t always work but most of the times we are actually happy with how the ideas have developed.

Jaime Leme | Co-founder of AIRimages: Our project is participatory in two different ways: first and foremost we collaborate with other artists to organize an event. Then, the public joins us and participates during the event.
The positive aspect is the possibility to work with artists of different creative backgrounds, as this opens the possibility of learning different ways of seeing art and images. The negative point is that sometimes it’s not that easy to channel different participants into one main idea, but in that case it’s important to learn from one’s mistakes…

Sebastien Freuler | Co-founder of AIRimages: The positive aspect of working with large collaborative groups is that there is a constant renewal and flow of ideas. The only negative point is that it can get hard to harness the outcome of this vibrant flux of ideas. It is really about balancing outside ideas with the original concept, to make sure the latter is not totally lost.

artpjf: „A visual discussion on Pop“ is a selection from one of a series of photographic projects that is underway. What does this project consist of and would you define yourself as pop?

Bettina John | Co-founder of AIRimages: We are not pop at all and that was a reason for us to discuss what pop is and what one has to know to do the „POPtalk“. A lot of artists are not very immersed in pop culture yet they are made into pop. With our work it’s rather difficult since we have successfully defied all categories. Sometimes that is a problem since the industry only works in categorizations. You’re either art or fashion or fine art photography or performance art or theatre and so on.

Jaime Leme | Co-founder of AIRimages: This project consists in a series of interactive techniques to engage the participants to reenact their favorite pop icons. What we want to raise are questions like:
How does media changed our perception of reality?
Are we influenced by Pop icon’s images in our lifestyle?
If so, is that good or bad?
I think that the idea of POP is to create an image that is recognizable by a lot of people at the same time. I think this is an interesting aspect of contemporary culture but what I don’t really like about it is that normally the image is manipulated to trick us and generally another idea is concealed behind the image itself.

artpjf: Your website has an exceptional style. In what way is Airimages reflected in some of the sentences like „Information is emptiness“ ! or ‚Do you not want to escape the myth sometimes‘ or ‚We proclaim the end of images…. BASTARDS‘?

Bettina John | Co-founder of AIRimage: These expressions play exactly along these lines so as not to belong to categories that are just surface and are just there to catch people’s attention. But that does not mean there is anything behind it. They are just a package. ‚We proclaim the end of images‘ is the assumption that our extensive consumption of images will lead to their end and redundancy. They are becoming a facade with no depth. If you look at most of fashion photography; behind it there is just one intention: to sell a product. There is no real event.

Sebastien Freuler | Co-founder of AIRimages: Our website is an essential piece of the existence of AIRimages, it has to portray our philosophy and how this relates to the language of the web and at the same time portray us as individuals. The first page acts as a portal reflecting our commons thoughts. For me the sentences found on the page act as a device plunging people into the mindset of AIRimages. They are words that provoke and conjure up thoughts.

Bettina John | Co-founder of AIRimages: We have just finished a performance at the Roundhouse where we looked into our celebrity culture; this performance involved much advanced planning. It is still the idea of pop and identity that concerns us. At the moment we are speaking to old and very old people about their past and their role models and ways of entertaining themselves. We hope to get some answers to where the future of the image lies.

Jaime Leme | Co-founder of AIRimages: Our last project, was in an old peoples home, it was quite an interesting experience. It would be great to develop this into a longer collaboration, maybe create events with interactions between old and young people.

Sebastien Freuler | Co-founder of AIRimages: We still need to explore different platforms for our work. We are currently working on a documentary on AIRimages that we hope to release by the end of the year and we are also starting to work alongside curators to see how we can present our multiple projects.